*This post occurred before I changed the WIP title.*
Tuesdays are the day I have set aside to get my creative mind rolling by writing flash fiction. For the time being, these stories will be set in Teorre, the world of my current WIP, The Crystal Bearer. This week, I used 30 Flash Fiction Prompts to help me pick one that stood out to me. The story below is a love story, part of a look into the past of a minor character who appears later in my WIP but is mentioned early. I'm also dabbling with a story for him, but we'll see what comes of it. 13: Write a story that deals with or includes some aspect of a taboo.
Love on the Hill
Grey marched hard and fast up to the temple. He didn’t care
who he frightened. He was certain the smallfolk in his path feared his
determined frown, but he needed her to know, consequences be damned. The angry
words they exchanged were greatly overshadowed by their kiss or the fear in her
eyes when she claimed it was wrong, that they simply couldn’t do it. She was a
hillsprite, and he was a hulktroll. The races simply did not engage in that
way.
Grey no longer cared.
He burst through the doors and up the stairs to the library.
The scholar looked up with surprised, yet worried, eyes.
“Why, Grey,” Darius said. “What brings you back here?”
“I need to speak with Shadlyn,” Grey said, his voice firm
despite his organs losing solidity inside him.
“She went to fetch herbs. She should be back any minute.”
Darius’s words were to Grey’s back by then, for he had
turned and left to hurry back down the stairs. The Humans and Sprites whom he
had startled on the way into the temple still stood there practically
dumbfounded and backed away when Grey returned. He skidded to a halt as Shadlyn
and two other nursemaids walked through the temple doors. When her large, emerald green eyes caught his, she stopped as well, a flush creeping into her cheeks.
“I don’t care who hears this,” Grey said loudly. “I love
you, Shadlyn.” The nursemaid to Shadlyn’s right quickly caught the basket that
slipped from Shadlyn’s suddenly limp hands. “That you are a Sprite and I a Trollic
isn’t going to change that.”
The shocked eyes all around--staring first up at this crazy
Trollic in the middle of a busy foyer declaring his love for her, then down to
her for her response--became a blur for Shadlyn. Her heart pounded rapidly in
her ears, and her body trembled. When she blinked, she realized Grey was
approaching her. He knelt in front of her and reached up to cup her now wet
face.
But his touch calmed her.
“I love you,” he said again, his silver eyes looking back
and forth into hers. “And I know you love me, too.” Shadlyn
held Grey’s hands in place against her skin.
One of Darius’s assistants hesitated, but he took three
uneasy steps closer. “You know the scholar will have to notify the Council and
Sprityn King.”
“And?” Grey shot a look at the Human that made him cower
back to from wherever he had come. Then, he looked back to Shadlyn. “Let them
start another war to try to keep us apart. I’ve nearly died for you twice now.
I’ll do it a third time.”
Shadlyn laughed in the midst of her astonished tears and
leaned down to rest her forehead against Grey’s. The murmurs around them were a
low buzz to her ears as his thumbs wiped her cheeks clear. It was madness. She
knew this. She knew Grey knew this. She knew if she looked around, there would
be more than a few horrified Sprityn eyes staring at her.
But Sprites had looked at her that way before, for helping this very same Trollic, and she
survived.
“I love you, too.”
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